Photos by Antonio Graceffo

"Gi gong. Gi gong!" I repeated, switching to Khmer. "I want to ride a bicycle around Angkor Wat," I insisted.

"But it is more than 30 kilometres," protested the clerk at the bicycle shop. "And besides, it is raining."

Thirty kilometres isn't a huge distance for a bicycle. But, he did have a point about the rain.

"When do you think it will let up?" I asked, considering postponing.

"In a month or two."

"Then give me a bicycle now," I decided. I paid my two dollars rental and made the clerk's day. Now, when he went for lunch with his colleagues, he would have a fun story to tell.

Cambodia is great for adventure tours, but you shouldn't come during the rainy season if you are afraid of water. The air temperature is always pretty high, so a cool drizzle can feel good sometimes. Besides, after 20 minutes of bike riding, I am usually dripping with sweat anyway.

The bicycle, a cheap Chinese copy of a mountain bike, was easily the worst bicycle I had ever ridden. Neither the gears nor the brakes worked, and that made for a lot of fun in the rain. The seat post and wheels were bent, and the rear axles made a loud klunking noise once each revolution. The chain also went completely slack at times, causing the pedals to spin independently. They usually came around and cracked me on the shins. It was a lot like when I was learning Khmer Kickboxing and had to kick tree trunks with my shins.

"You will be a champion some day," said Thavrin, who was my companion for the entire Cambodian adventure.

I've had better bicycles. But no bicycle ever gave me as much as this one did while taking me around Angkor Wat. It is one of the Wonders of the Ancient World, and I was there on a bicycle. Not bad for a boy from Brooklyn who once believed you would fall off the Earth if you went beyond East 78th Street.

Many Khmers think all foreigners are insane. In Khmer culture, anyone with enough money to go on vacation could afford a driver, or at least a car. They don't quite understand why we would chose to ride a bicycle.

For me, aside from a need to work off all of the free four-star meals I had been eating in this trip, a bicycle is the best way to tour anything. It is faster than walking, which can sometimes get tedious. You can barely walk 30 kilometres in a day, much less stop off and look at interesting temples. A car is too fast. And there is something both decadent and displeasing about stepping out of an air-conditioned vehicle, snapping a digital photo and then driving to the next interesting temple. A bicycle is somehow more honest.

The distance from the town of Siem Reap to the Angkor Wat complex is only about two or three kilometres. Less than one kilometre out of Siem Reap, the noise level drops to zero. You follow a beautiful, tree-lined path to the moat. No matter how many photos you have seen of Angkor Wat, nothing will prepare you for your first glimpse of the actual temple. It rises up like some beautiful creation of the gods.

Entrance into the park is free for Khmers. For foreigners, it costs $20 for a day pass or $40 for a three-day pass. The park is so incredibly large, that it cannot be seen in one day... or even three for that matter. If you have already paid thousands of dollars for a plane ticket to Cambodia, you might as well stay the extra two or three days and really experience Angkor Wat. Once again, like all of the temple complexes in Cambodia, you are free to wander and do pretty much whatever you want inside of the park. But, it is recommended to hire a guide. English speaking guides run about $20 per day. Guides for other languages are more expensive. They will explain the intricacies of ancient Khmer architecture, as well as all of the legends from the Ramayana and elsewhere, which appear on the walls of the great temple. Without a guide you are just wandering aimlessly about, snapping photos of interesting stoneworks, which will all look the same to you when you get the photos developed after you return home.

At the park entrance, the guard told me I had to buy a ticket. Since I had a krama (a traditional Khmer scarf) wrapped around my head and I speak Khmer, I tried to get in for free.

"I am Khmer," I told him. "I don't have to pay."

Many Khmers have never heard a foreigner speak their language, and the guard was noticeably taken off balance. Finally, he formulated the question that had been running around his head, "If you are Khmer, why is your skin so white?"

"My father is Chinese," I said.

"But your Khmer doesn't sound perfect."

"My mother died in the war."

This almost convinced him. But then he asked, "Why do you have round eyes?"

"I was adopted by an American family," I said.

I don't think he actually believed the story, but there must have been nothing in his training course to prepare him for a foreigner trying to pass himself off as a half-Chinese war orphan. Finally, we both burst out laughing and I felt a little guilty about my clumsy attempt at deception. Of course, the joke was on me because now I had to shell out $40 for a three-day pass.

"Tell your mother she can get in for free," he told me as he waved me through.

Maybe he had believed me after all.

Once through the gates, there was a choice of two routes to take: the Grand Loop or the Small Loop. I chose the Grand Loop, which measures about 30 kilometres all the way around the complex. The first kilometre takes you past the main Angkor Wat temple, which you are familiar with from postcards and T-shirts. And if you have had the good fortune of living in Cambodia for a year and a half, as I have, you will have received at least one gift -- a dinner plate, paperweight or toothbrush -- which bears the sacred image.

Angkor Wat is the symbol of Khmer pride; its image even adorns the Cambodian flag. Cambodia was more than twice its current size during the time of the Angkor Empire (1100 AD) -- which is also referred to as The Glorious Age -- when Khmer civilization was at its peak.

According to my guide, Samban, from Phnom Penh Tours, Cambodia bordered China, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar in ancient times. Effectively, there was no Vietnam then. Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, was part of Cambodia. Eventually, the Kingdom of Vietnam encroached on Khmer soil, until Cambodia no longer reached to China. Later, the French ceded the lower half of Cambodia, called Kampuchea Krom, to Vietnam. Thailand also infringed on Cambodian territory, even occupying Angkor Wat for some brief periods of history.

Although Angkor Wat is both a world heritage site and the single-most important artefact of Cambodian history, the temple is not some isolated relic. It is a living, breathing part of modern Khmer life. Bamboo huts of neighbouring villages are built right up to the moat of the ancient temple. Hawkers earn their living selling products to the visitors, with constant shouts of "Mr., okay, you come eat drink, okay." The moat is so large that people make a profession of fishing in it. Children ride bicycles along the great stone walls, but not for the whole 30 kilometres... only foreigners were that dumb. And we saw several others doing the same as us.

One of the nice things about travelling by bicycle is that you are guaranteed a warm reception wherever you go. I wanted my first day at Angkor Wat to be about the people who lived along its perimiter or made their living directly from the temple. On a bicycle it was easy to stop and converse with people anytime we chose. And, of course, the Khmer people were always willing to chat.

You can buy Antonio Graceffo's latest paperback, "The Desert of Death on Three Wheels," by clicking here.

The first group we stopped to talk to was of small children doing traditional fishing. They waded into the marshy areas on the fringes of the moat carrying a scoop-shaped screen made of woven bamboo. They stooped down, and pushed the screen, like a sledge, through the water. Similar to panning for gold, they would pick through the silt and weeds when the screen was full. After discarding the muck on his screen, one small boy put a handful of tiny fish in a plastic jug.

"Do you do this for business?" I asked him.

"No, for soup," He answered.

The children tried to teach me to use the screen, but I couldn't get the hang of it. The trick was to trawl just deep enough to collect water, but not so deep that the screen fouled on the long weeds growing up out of the water. Even for experienced fishers, the job was not very rewarding. After hours of fishing, the children had collected about 30 fish, each the size of your thumb.

We crossed over the bridge at the North Gate of Angkor Tom. The tops of the railings along the sides of the bridge were seven-headed naga (giant serpents from Hindu/Buddhist mythology). The 30-metre-long naga were supported by stone figures, each of which depicted a different character from Hindu/Buddhist mythology. The figures fighting for good were on the left side of the bridge. All of the evil characters were on the right.

At the end of the bridge, we passed beneath a massive stone arch which displayed bas-reliefs from the myth entitled "The Churning Sea of Milk" (Go Samut Duk Dah). Set atop the arch was a Buddhist satva. Samban explained, "A satva is someone on his way to becoming Buddha. The Dali Lama would be an example of a satva."

We rode on to a less-visited attraction which is not on the itinerary of the one-day tourists. Samban led me from the road down a quiet green path. We climbed up an embankment and stood atop a stone parapet. In the ground below us gaped an oval-shaped hole reminiscent of an ancient area. The pit was approximately three metres deep and the area measured approximately 100 square metres.

"It is believed," Said Samban, "that the ancient Khmers would drive wild elephants into this pit and train them for the army."

At that moment, it dawned on me that not only were the ancient Khmers gone, but the elephants as well. In addition to being home to the most powerful empire in Indochina, Cambodia had also been home to elephants and tigers. But, like so many other resources in the country, countless years of civil war, poverty and corruption have driven the animals nearly to extinction.

Back on the bicycles, we enjoyed the serenity and invasive green of the Khmer rainy season. It would probably have been better to ride a bike on a sunny day, but at least the rain kept us cool. In the dry season, the heat would have been oppressive.

Our next stop was at Preah Khan, which was originally built as a Buddhist temple in 1191 by King Jaya Varaman VII, who instituted Buddhism as the national religion of Cambodia. But, when he died, King Jaya Varaman VIII changed the national religion back to Hinduism. The new king ordered the faces of the Buddhist statues destroyed. Today, the temple is adorned with 15,000 faceless Buddas.

The temple was topped by a tile roof and constructed of heavy stone blocks connected with metal joints. Temples were protected by tremendous bas reliefs of the three mythical animals: garuda (half man/half bird), naga and lions. These were the symbols of power and were permitted to remain on the temple after the ascension of Jaya Varaman VIII. All three figures have since been accepted by both Buddhist and Hindu kings of Cambodia.

Both the enormity of these temples and the beauty of the detailed craftsmanship is difficult to take in. That devotion to a god unseen drove men to create such structures is unfathomable today, when most of us can't be bothered to go to church. But, one of the most amazing aspects of the temples is that no one ever lived in them. Even monks and kings were housed outside in wooden structures. The temples were strictly the dwelling places of the gods.

Many of the temples were surrounded by a moat and enclosed behind stone walls which bore a martial appearance. Reminded of European castles, I asked Samban if the temples had played any military role or if, perhaps, in times of war they would have been used as fortresses. Any discussion of Cambodian history always turns to the unhealed scars left by the Khmer Rouge. The Angkor Empire had departed from the earth hundreds of years before anyone had heard of Pol Pot. But the precious stones of Angkor Wat were witnesses to genocide.

Samban explained that during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, from 1979 to 1987, the Vietcong turned these temples into garrisons. Siem Reap was the primary battleground during the war between the Khmer Rouge and Lon Nol, 1970-1975. So, obviously, tourists weren't able to visit the temples at that time. During the Khmer Rouge period, 1975-1979, no foreigners were even allowed to enter Cambodia. The first tourism officially began in 1987 when the Vietnamese government created a state-run tourist agency. At that time, there were very few tourists and they were mostly from Communist Block countries. But the area around the temples had been so heavily mined by Vietnamese soldiers that you couldn't visit most of them. Siem Reap remained a Khmer Rouge stronghold until 1991 when UNTAC arrived (the UN peace keeping mission).

"In the '60s, there were tourists here," Exclaimed Samban. But then, because of the KR, the temples were neglected or destroyed. "I saw photos of the temples in 1989. They were completely overgrown, reclaimed by the jungle."

On the way back to our bicycles, we stopped off to interview a band of musicians, all land-mine victims. They were seated on the ground, displaying their amputations, playing traditional Khmer instruments. One man, Wan Yun, was only 32 but already blind in one eye and missing a leg.

"Did this happen to you in the army?" I asked.

"Yes," Answered Wan Yun. He looked sad, but he was still smiling politely, which is the Khmer way. One might think that after working at Angkor Wat he would be tired of tourists. But he seemed genuinely excited to be talking to me. Maybe it was because most tourists just walked past him or gave him money without taking the time to recognize that he was a human being who needed to talk.

In most countries, asking if someone had been in the army was enough. But in Cambodia the next question had to be "Which one?" In recent memory, Khmer men and women have served in the Royal Army (under King Norodom Sihanouk), the Republican army (under Lon Nol), the Khmer Rouge (under Pol Pot), the Khmer Serai (free Khmer army) under a number of different leaders, the Kampuchea army (under the Vietcong) or, finally, the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (under Prime Minister Hun Sen). If you conducted enough interviews, it was not difficult to find men in their early fifties, who had served in several or all of the Cambodian armies.

Wan Yun told me that he had been injured in 1993 while serving in Hun Sen's army, fighting the Khmer Rouge near the Thai border. Two years ago, he had been taken into a government program and was taught to play music. Now, he and the rest of the band members live in a government-run shelter and support themselves by performing for tourists.

Two massive, headless guardians protected the entrance to the temple. "I brought a tourist here in 1999," explained Samban. "She was shocked when she saw the heads were missing from the statues. After she returned to her country, she sent me copies of the photos she had made here in 1969. The heads were on the statues at that time."

"Who stole them?" I asked.

"It could have been a number of people," answered Samban. "The Vietnamese took a lot of our historical artifacts with them when they left. It also could have been Khmer Rouge."

"Could it have been some poor people who sold them for food?" I suggested.

"Absolutely not!" Samban was emphatic here. "Poor people have no idea of the value of these artifacts. They would also have no idea how to sell them."

"How are they sold?" I asked, just in case things didn't work out as a writer, maybe I could become a temple raider.

"The artifacts have to be transported to Thailand, then smuggled across the border and sold on the Thai black market."

The border with Thailand was still quite pores, but in the Khmer Rouge time, before 1994, it was even worse, with KR cadres passing back and forth at will. It is also a well-known secret that Thai border police accept bribes. Some Khmers go as far as saying that the Thai allow the transport and sale of the Khmer artifacts out of spite, just to rid the Cambodians of their cultural heritage.

Regardless of Thai complicity, to take a massive stone sculpture and transport it through numerous military blockades and police roadblocks before even getting to the Thai border would require permission and protection from someone high up. Said another way, the sculptures weren't sold by a poor farmer trying to feed his starving family. They were sold by powerful people, Vietnamese or otherwise, to buy a new Land Cruiser, while the family of the poor farmer continued to starve.

The sheer mass of the temple construction is impressive enough. But then you see the intricate details. Every inch of the lintels is covered in bas relief depicting the Ramayana, the central myth of Hindu and Buddhism. The walls inside the temple were rough and pockmarked. Samban explained that they were once covered in bronze plates, many of which were gilded. In the entire Angkor complex not a single metallic plate remains. They were all stolen.

The rain let up and we continued on our bicycles, burning off the 18,000-calorie meals we had been eating. At the 20-kilometre mark, the tour ended. Now, we had about 15 kilometres to ride back to town and return the bikes. On the way, we passed some men throwing fishing nets from an embankment. We stopped off to get our second fishing lesson of the day.

"Do you sell these fish?" I asked.

"No, we just catch them for our mothers and wives," answered one of the men. "And if we don't, there is trouble at home," he joked.

The men explained that they were full-time farmers and just enjoyed fishing. Seeing them standing side by side, laughing and talking, I realized that for these men, throwing their nets out together was a social occasion, the equivalent of an afternoon in the local pub. They could meet their friends and discuss the things that mattered to them, as well as those that didn't. But unlike westerners in a pub, these men were burning calories, not absorbing them. And they were earning money, not spending it. Even the rural poor had a lesson to teach the west.

Working a full day, they could collect about half a kilogram, or about $1 worth of fish. Many poor Khmers exist on a diet of almost nothing but rice. Even in Phnom Penh, some of the boxers I train with only get about 100 grams of meat a day, not enough to build muscle. These fishermen were luckier than inland farmers because the fish would add much needed protein to their diet.

Clumsily, I took the net from one of the men. They all laughed at how out of my element I looked.

"You don't have a wife or mother, do you?" Asked one of the men.

"No," I answered.

"That's good," he said. "Because you would never be able to feed them."

The net is large, perhaps three square metres. The edges of the net are weighted with bits of metal. The secret, apparently, is in the packing. The fishermen knew exactly how to gather and fold the net, wrapping it over the left shoulder and left elbow, and then dividing the weighted bottom between their left and right hands. They would twist at the waist and launch the net into the air. The trick here was to throw the net high enough that it would open completely before hitting the water, but not so high that it would begin to ball up before submerging. Once thrown, the net would be retracted using a lanyard attached to the left wrist.

When it came my turn to throw, I was surprised at how much the net weighed. In fact, I handed my phone and valuables to Thavrin. "Just in case I wind up following the net into the water," I said. I could just see me throwing myself off balance, falling in the lake, getting tangled in the net and then drowning in three feet of water. I put my pocket-knife between my teeth just in case.

"Ang ay dong ut ite?" I asked my teacher.

He jut stared at me, wonderingly.

"Am I doing it right?" I repeated, after temporarily removing the knife from between my teeth.

"Yes." He said with a big smile.

We both knew he was lying, but he didn't want to hurt my feelings. I made a feeble attempt at a throw and the net became hopelessly tangled.

"How did I do?" I asked Thavrin, hoping he would use Khmer decorum and find something positive to say about my failed effort.

"Your gums are bleeding," he said, pointing at the knife marks on my mouth.

My cell phone rang. It was my sponsor, Long Leng. "I have been trying to reach you all day," he began. "Have you been going to look at the attractions so you can write something?"

"Sorry," I said, quoting a sign I had once seen on a country store in Alabama. "Gone fishing."

Contact the author at: antonio_graceffo@hotmail.com

You can reach Long Leng of Phnom Penh Tours at ppenhtourism@camnet.com.kh